UPDATE: Pauly Shore Reschedules Boise Shows Following Death of Mother

Pauly Shore
Pauly Shore will perform four sets in Boise at Liquid Laughs on Friday and Saturday, April 13 and 14.

Update: Wednesday, April 11

Mitzi Shore, the mother of comedian Pauly Shore, died Wednesday morning. She was 87 years old. Mitzi was a founder of The Comedy Store in Los Angeles—the club that helped usher in the standup careers of dozens of top-rate standup comedians like Jay Leno, Jerry Seinfeld and Gary Shandling.

Jeremy Aevermann, who owns Liquid Laughs comedy club in Boise, has said Pauly has asked to move his scheduled performances there to Friday and Saturday, June 1 and 2.

"Pauly is pretty down. so it is best he skips the week and has some time to grieve," wrote Aevermann in an email to Boise Weekly.

Shore was slated to perform this upcoming Friday and Saturday, April 13 and 14. Instead, Aevermann has arranged for a make-up show featuring comedian Ryan Wingfield as the headliner, and tickets to see Shore's performances have been transferred to the new dates. The make-up shows will be free to attend for anyone with tickets to see Shore's performance, meaning ticket-holders will be able to see two shows for the price of one.

Original Post: April 3, 2018

Nobody is entirely sure how many times comedian Pauly Shore has performed in Boise. According Shore himself, his visits number two or three. Jeremy Aevermann, owner of the BoDo comedy club Liquid Laughs, thinks it's closer to four or five.

Since much of Shore's life is the stuff of legend, the ambiguity is more to the point than the truth. The son of The Comedy Store founder Mitzi Shore and comedian Sammy Shore, he's a prince of the blood of American comedy; his "The Weasel" persona, which carried him through years of MTV's Spring Break and half a decade of films like Encino Man and In the Army Now, was widely imitated by youngsters in the early 1990s and reviled by their parents. In 2003 he wrote, directed and starred in a fictionalized account of his own life, Pauly Shore Is Dead.

Shore the MTV and film fixture may have been lost in the haze, but the man himself is very much alive, and ahead of four sets he will perform at Liquid on Friday and Saturday, April 13 and 14, he spoke about his upcoming projects, impersonating Trump adviser Stephen Millerand working with fellow comedian Jay Mohr (who will also perform at Liquid later this month) on what he hopes will be a new series.

You're working on a TV series, Alone Together. What's it about?I'm just doing a guest spot. It's my friend's show, my friend Benji. I was recently on. I'm working on a lot of different things—that's just the most recent thing to come out. If you go to Funny or Die, there's a lot of stuff on there that I recently did. There's a thing called "Silverlake Vice Squad," there's a thing called "The Steven Miller Thing." You can see all the most recent stuff.

The "Stephen Miller Talks Statue of Liberty Facts" bit got some attention from The New Yorker. How did you get that role?Well, he's a knucklehead, and once he was a knucklehead, Funny or Die called me to play him. I've done stuff with them before, so we just knocked it out. It's like when Sean Spicer or Donald Trump say things and comedians hop on it. I guess I was in character with this guy, you know what I mean. The guy's not too hard to impersonate for me. He's snarky, Mr. Know-It-All, totally pushes buttons.

What else have you done for Funny or Die? We did also "Silver Lake Vice Squad," that's with Jay Mohr, myself, Bobby Lee and this actor Richard Schiff, from Ballers, and we're trying to push that into a TV show right now. We have meetings around town for that as well. That's got over 1 million views as well.

How do you expand on the concept of "Silver Lake Vice Squad?" It'll be called, like, Undercover Vice. We'd get marching orders from our chief of police, and every episode we go undercover in a different neighborhood, a black neighborhood, a gay neighborhood, a Hasidic Jewish neighborhood. Whatever it is, and we have to dress up in these different characters to infiltrate the ring. Maybe Jews are, like, they're selling methamphetamine or some shit at a deli, and we have to go in there and break the shit up.

You've been to Boise a few times before. What do you do while you're in town?I do the gigs and I come home. I don't really stay. I go to Starbucks, I go to the gym, I write, I have a nice meal and take it easy. I don't venture.

You worked on a documentary about yourself. What did you learn?I had a documentary about myself that came out on Showtime. It's called Pauly Shore Stands Alone. It's on Amazon NOW, and I have a documentary series based on that. I learned what not to do with all these knuckleheads. Comedians are very fucked up. I've been surrounded by them. It's kind of like you just learn what to do and what not to do. I think when people see these things, there's a reason why I'm making them.

Who do you see as your audience?I think a lot of it is that Rosanne audience. White America. When [I was] in Michigan, I thought some of my audience was KKK, I could have sworn. It's crazy. That's what America is: America is white out there, and it's so crazy. Because I live in L.A., I see all races and all colors and shapes and sizes, and I go out there, and it's, just, America. I didn't build it. I just go. Those are the people that voted for Donald Trump.

They're showing up at your shows; meanwhile, you're working with Funny or Die on a video skewering Stephen Miller. When I tell the audience I'm Jewish, they don't care. It's hilarious. I just think, with Donald Trump as president, those people have come out. He's their leader. They've always been there, but in the Obama years they were chilling behind the scenes. Now that they have their president, they feel like they want to come out and be heard. That's what I see at his rallies.

You've attend a Trump rally?No, but that would be awesome to. The visual of it would be hilarious. I'd get a good 10 minutes of material if I went.

If you could have one experience that you think would inform your stand-up routine, what would it be?Go whitewater rafting in Boise. That'll be a good tag for your piece.